Help living with a lion

[Colohunter]

I say find a local houndsmen to put the cat in a tree and figure out what it is. If it looks old and unhealthy then I would find some one with a tag or the DOW officer to kill it. If its healthy and a tom Id let some one harvest it. If its a healthy female Id let her go but only after harrasing her a little and making her uncoffortable around your place. Usually if the habitat is suitable for a lion you accomplish nothing by remove a cat as another will replace it and sometimes the replacement cat will be worse than the one you removed. Just my 2 cents worth.

[schnell]

Wish I was a little closer, I'd be trying to drop by at sunrise.

[Desert Hounds]

Sable

Remember the Lion is a predator and he is scoping and looking for your food. He is learning and mapping your terrain and food source locations. When he is ready he will attack and kill, whether it be a calf, dog, chicken, anything with four legs and some two. You can run the lion off with dogs but he will return later, when he is hungry. It will take many times to run the lion off with dogs. I would contact Houndsmen in your area to help.

[Sable]

Well you all have me confused Some say the lion has to go now, others say no problem at all. I guess there isn't much of a middle ground. I have to say i'm firmly with the 'get rid of it now' camp. I don't like feeling like I live in the lion enclosure at the zoo. Maybe i'm wrong to be so concerned, but if you can't feel safe at home where can you? We have had a very trying year, my husband lost his job two days after Christmas and the new ranch owners gave us a month to leave and two weeks' pay. He was born and raised on the ranch and his father had worked their for more than 40 years. The day it changed hands they gave his father his notice. This house was our salvation, we had nowhere else to go. I lost over 70 birds to bobcats in two nights last January, and if my horses or milk cow or goats were attacked I would be devastated. If it hurt my dogs i'd be climbing the tree after it.

We are working on getting permission from the ranch manager to let someone to hunt it. My husband is a good shot but i'd imagine hunting for it without dogs would be fruitless, and he knows better than to risk getting my dogs hurt! All six are large dogs and i'm sure they'd let us know in a hurry if the lion was in the yard (we have three Black Mouth Curs), but I worry they'd take on more than they could handle. I know they'd give their lives to protect us. In case it wasn't obvious i've been doing a lot of worrying about the whole situation

[Emily]

Sable
Lions don't usually bother livestock where deer are plentiful. However, goats are relatively easy for them to take, especially newborns. You have some realistic concerns here. And occasionally, lions will kill a bunch of livestock for reasons of their own, that have nothing to do with food.
What people have been trying to say here is that injured or elderly lions are more of a threat to your livestock than young healthy ones. Since this lion seems to have established your house as part of its territory, it is not going to move on unless it is uncomfortable there. Hounds can help with that. Even your curs should be capable of running the lion off if the lion is in good shape. They may not tree it, but they should be able to keep it at a distance. Lions don't usually pick fights. If your curs were to chase it, chances are the lion would leave them alone if they broke off its trail.
Since you say you've lost a lot of birds to bobcats, are you sure that the tracks you are seeing are lion and not just bobcat tracks that have expanded in the sun with time? Do you use your curs on bobcats? (They can be a lot scrappier than lions.) And a bobcat is quite capable of taking a newborn kid, so you need to make sure the goats are properly defended no matter what.
I would do my best to document the lion tracks right next to your buildings. That will be your best defense if you find you have to kill the lion for depredation.
A motion-sensor light may help. Lions are cautious and prefer not to be seen. However, they're often smart enough to get used to something nonlethal like that, so it would have to be moved around regularly to keep working.

[bob baldwin jr]

Emily : You raise some very interesting points . I still have a few friends in south central Florida . That are ranchers . At the time there was not much of a coyote problem . But after the State re-established the lion population it turned out that they started losing Calves ,sheep and goats to lions . Ironically many also from bobcats . I recall that to have received compensation for the livestock loses that both Fish and Game and Dept of Agriculture had to make investigation reports. as to causes of death.

Up here in Maine last summer there were 2 sister lady farmers raising sheep and goats . apparently during the spring kid/lambing season coyote were causing havoc . I sister whom I guess was a pretty good shot had dumped 4 coyotes 3 days latter their nephew dumped 2 bobcats feeding on a lamb carcus . So they called the F&G warden service they came out ,did not raise a stink about the yotes but questioned the nephew about shooting the bobbers out of season .Ended up taking the 2 bobbers and the lamb to U of Maine for autopsy further examination .They determined that the Bobbers had infact killed the lamb and were eating on it . Not sure how they arrived at that conclusion ,but all potential charges against the nephew were dropped and they were compesated fot their losses . Those are the only 2 instances I have ever heard about with Bobcats and live stock .

Just curious if that is happening in your area or any other states

[larry]

It may or may not need to be killed, but you are definatlely over reacting. How is someone that lives in lion country with livestock so uneducated about them? Of course you are with the get rid of it now group, you would have found a different place to get that answer had you not got it here cause thats what you wanted to hear. Depending on game laws and what it is, you may not even be able to legally kill it. Please repost the end result of whatever happens, I'm betting the cat is gone by the time you try to get something done.

How is it that someone in NY is an expert Emily?

[bency]

Sable,

Sent you a PM.

[007pennpal]

Well, if you have curs I think you probably already know what to do about a lion. Anyway, just wanted to say that the motion light idea won't work. I watched a lion in one. Usually, if its not a large lion, it could be trying to establish an area of its own. The younger lions get pushed around a lot before they settle.
Sean

[Desert Hounds]

Sable

Check first to see if Houndsmens will volunteer to help. If not you can contact the United States Department of Agriculture; Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in New Mexico, 1-866-487-3297. They might have one or two employees who are houndsmen with their dogs to harvest the Mt. Lion.
Here is a resource that hopefully will help;


Click here to view PDF full size

[Sable]

Sorry if i was unclear, the bobcats were at our old house. We caught them in the act. We did have lions in the area, one killed and maimed several colts and we had some cattle killed. They were hunted and dispatched promptly. The difference is they were not at the house, they were miles away in the pasture. Perhaps I am ignorant, but I am trying to educate myself as to how to handle the issue and I see no shame in that. The house is not new, there has been a home there for 100 years or so, but it has been vacant for a few months. The lion did kill a calf at a neighbouring occupied house, so I have little faith that our presence alone will keep it away. They first saw it in July in a tree by their front door. They called the game dept. to ask what to do, they came out by which time the lion was gone, and told them they should have shot it

Our curs are not hunting dogs they are cattle dogs. They do have some hog hunting blood, but we have never used them for anything but cattle so that they do not hunt when they should be working cows (not that we hunt anyway). They are aggressive.

The goats' new nighttime enclosure resembles Alcatraz. It is 8' chainlink with three rows of barbed wire, with barely two inches of clearance to the barn ceiling. There's not much more I can do to protect them. It may sound silly to be so concerned about goats, but they are a small dairy herd and the loss of production would be considerable.

We're still waiting for permission to have it hunted or run off. Game camera is out, i'll put some sand out to see if I can get some tracks. I'd estimate those seen the other day to be about 5-6" across. They had been left the night before as it had snowed. Here I go with another of my 'uneducated' questions, but if lions are mostly nocturnal how do you hunt them in the daylight? Do you find them where they were sleeping, or hunt them at first light?

[007pennpal]

If you have snow you can walk the track out to freshen it or just turn the dogs loose if they will take it. It helps to drive around the area to see if it crossed a road. The day night thing only matters for laws. Dogs can sometimes trail tracks that are over one day old depending on conditions.
Sean

[TomJr]

Are your dogs outside guarding at all times? If so they will most likly tree it next time it comes past... Assuming they are normal dogs

Some of the folks saying let it live are from areas that have been hit hard by hunters and game laws that have dropped the population, so they are understandably concerned about killing lions... I wander if they were in your place with livestock very important to thier livlihood, would they be saying the same thing?

I live in an area where we can get lions and other critters very close to the house and have my dogs outside at all times. They have a 6 foot fenced 10 acres both to keep them home and to keep some stuff out. Lions can jump that easy as can some of my dogs. Trying to keep everything out would be too expensive and likly not possible so thats the dog's main job. We have had lions treed on the property at night as well as bears ect.

So let those dogs do thier job and don't worry to much about them getting hurt, with 6 dogs they will likly be fine.

[M Evertsen]

I am one that normally says to let females go and help to conserve lions for the future of the sport of hounding.

HOWEVER - if there is a lion frequently walking within 100 yards of my house, and behind my barn (or any of my friend's or neighbors, or rancher's), and I can catch it - dead lion - figure out the sex later.

If I was asked to go chase a lion that was behind a barn around here, and let it go, I would not be let back on the property, near the property, would probably have my dogs shot, etc.

The bottom line is lions are meat eaters, and that it was they need to survive. Once they realize that food source, then they will keep coming back. Females will bring their kittens, and the problem continues.

We turned loose yesterday on a track within about 300 yards of a ranch house. There were about 5 people there with a lion tag. It was going to die if caught, male, female, it did not matter.

IMO - the lion needs to die if caught!

Later,

Marcial

[catdogs]

IF most rural folks that live in lion country actually knew how close those cats get sometimes, they'd all freak out. I have run cats through peoples yards on numerous occasions. I saw a lion study they did in Cle Elum (sp?)WA and you wouldn't believe the GPS readings near and IN that town. MOST lions are not a threat to livestock or people.